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Category Archives: Government

It’s funny how running into someone that you haven’t seen for a while and having a five minute conversation can lead somewhere you weren’t expecting to go. Such is the case when a friend that I ran into at the grocery store the other day, and I talked about guardianship.

When he told me that our legislature was looking into re-writing the Missouri Statutes regarding the rules and regulations on guardianship, I was excited. Being a librarian of course, I set out to research what was happening but unfortunately there wasn’t much.

I did however find a website with some information on whose taking on this project and what the status is. The group is MO-WINGS or Missouri’s Working Interdisciplinary Network of Guardianship Stakeholders and here’s thewebsite. Now comes the hard part, finding out what comes next and how I can get involved.

Now I’ve been following this story for a little while, about Sheltered Workshops and how states are looking at alternatives. Well, anyway, it looks like at least the state of Minnesota is headed that way. I think that I need to reach out to my local state representative to find out what Missouri is doing.

In fact, I know a local store owner (whose son is also autistic) that I’m going to get in touch with in part because we had a discussion about the Sheltered Workshops a few weeks ago and how they pay so little. After I do that, I’ll let you know what happens.

Today and yesterday I came across these two articles on disabilities and our government. The first one is about former Senator Robert Dole and his tireless work to get congress to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. While it fell five votes short in 2012, he’s hopefull they’ll finally get it done. The article is “The One Issue 91-Year Old Bob Dole is Still Fighting” by Arlette Saenz over at Yahoo via ABC News.